A long time ago, someone said that the "Next Level" might be a restaurant he wants to take her to. Looks like that person guessed correctly.

Anyway, you've come a long way, Ruby, and now you completely overshot your goal. Cue mortification!

Sithlord of the Sithling and best customer of McLovecraft's , in the business of keeping the little Platypus in businessModerations in GREEN and signed by the DAMNed. I am not anonymous! Also, MODSMACK!! Winner of the... 2010 Kilopost FRANKIE; 2010 Mad March Nom Off; 2010 Joker Cleavage Contest; 2010 Fan-Thing Contest; 2010 Mimic Contest (tied); 2011 Joker Cleavage Contest; 2011 Contest-for-the-next-Contest (tied)

Ah yes, the shoe we were all expecting to drop. Meanwhile, one must assume that Zii is savouring her opportunity for revenge rather than rushing things.

I do like Ruby's "unobstructive, honest, but oh god no not slutty" virgin's-first-time dress. Though she may well also be wearing trousers. Cute speech to Minew, too. Missing out on the Arab food seems sad, though.

msaturn wrote:I should have asked this long ago, but why the hell would she even bang this doofus??? Because of his backstreet-boys-in-hell haircut???

Honestly? In my assessment... Because she's horny and he's cute and available.

Though she'd put it a little more subtly than that, and okay, it is slightly more complicated. On the one hand, she's never had many friends, and the discovery that she can make some, including a nice-looking and sweet-natured (if utterly clueless) guy who'd like to call himself her boyfriend, has been a pleasant but overwhelming shock for her. Now, she really doesn't want to blow it. She's going to do the things that people seem to require of friends, and if that includes having sex with the boyfriend, well, so be it.

Which isn't quite to say that she's screwing this guy out of a desperate need for friendship. She'd probably have turned him down if that had been all, while being sad about it. But, let's face it, she is horny. Her hormones have been, visibly, kicking in ever since she first saw Dillon and Jerzy, she's been badly distracted and confused by every other sexy scene since... It's all getting too much for her. And she's never really shown much convincing moral objection to sex; she's just mouthed a few conventional platitudes and claimed she didn't want to be distracted. She's still avoiding admitting too much, to herself or others, but it's a tissue-thin layer of repression at this point.

So now that she's got a minimal excuse - "Andy seems to expect it, and it'd feel rude to refuse" - she's going to go for it, without even really denying that she kind of likes the idea.

tl;dr: She's horny and he's cute and available.

I now suspect more than ever that panel 4 on Friday may well be a visual echo of panel 4 of strip #151.

Don Alexander wrote:A long time ago, someone said that the "Next Level" might be a restaurant he wants to take her to. Looks like that person guessed correctly.

A lot of us were thinking around that sort of possibility. It was hardly a difficult guess.

msaturn wrote:This comic jumped the shark or nuked the fridge or whatever the hell.

I should have asked this long ago, but why the hell would she even bang this doofus??? Because of his backstreet-boys-in-hell haircut???

Being attractive goes a long way. And he's a bit of a social bumbler, but then again so is Ruby. At least he means well and she could do a lot worse.

I'm not all that surprised that sex wasn't what he had in mind for the next level, but I have a feeling they're both going to end up in bed anyway when they feel relaxed about not having to live up to expectations.

That's my guess too, but they may go the long way round to get there, of course. Another possibility for the next strip is three panels of Ruby and Andy loosely echoing Ray and Dillon's dialogue from #151 ("I thought that you liked me" "I do but..." "Is there someone else?"), maybe followed by a panel of Dillon looking stressed out (again) as Julian snuggles up to him in bed.

she is going to keep assuming he expects sex while "secretly" being horny and eager, and now that the "cat is out of the bag"..............

and he wanted to be nice and patient, but now that he "knows" she wants sex and expects it, he feels obligated to go through it and I think he is ALSO a virgin, and I wonder if he listened to fact she said she was a virgin? or MOST LIKELY he took it as "first time in a kitchen table" but she has done it in other places ??

I suppose a potential next strip is a flustered Andy demurring, forcing Ruby to confront the possibility that she's hornier than the guy she's dating. Either it'd be interesting character development to see her come to terms with that, or it'd be a chance to showcase some comedic backpedaling.

She is indeed a wonderful artist who could doubtless turn her hand to anything, but from what I've seen, I don't get the feeling that she's very interested in depicting some of those bits in all their wrinkly Lovecraftian glory.

Wanna chat with me in realtime? Click my webpage button. In case I happen to be online, anyways...He who sees his own doom can better avoid its path. He who sees the doom of others can deliver it.The very moment I understood Callie was my fav character.High Priestess in the Church of Brasca